Arnold Orville Beckman (April 10, 1900 – May 18, 2004) was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of the pH meter, a device for measuring acidity, later considered to have “revolutionized the study of chemistry and biology”. He also developed the DU spectrophotometer, “probably the most important instrument ever developed towards the advancement of bioscience”.Beckman funded the first transistor company, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley. After retirement, he and his wife Mabel (1900-1989) were numbered among the top philanthropists in the United States.

Teaching and consultancy at Caltech

Hein J Wellens MD, Emeritus Professor of Cardiology, University of Maastricht, The Netherlands

, M.D., (born 13 November 1935, The Hague) is a Dutch cardiologist who is considered one of the founding fathers of the cardiology subspecialty known as clinical cardiac electrophysiology. Clinical cardiac electrophysiology enables patients with cardiac arrhythmmias to be subjected to catheter electrode mapping and stimulation studies. Paul Puech, first in Mexico and later in France; Benjamin Scherlag and Onkar Narula in the USA; and Dirk Durrer and Philippe Coumel in Europe were the field’s pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s. The field’s second wave of innovators used these techniques to unravel the mechanisms of tachycardia in humans and set the bases for their treatment. Among them, Hein Wellens in Europe and Kenneth Rosen, John Gallagher, and Mark Josephson in the USA had the greatest impact as researchers and teachers. Josephson is the author of the first and most successful textbook of clinical cardiac electrophysiology, now in its fourth edition.

Wellens, known among European cardiologists as “the giant of Maastricht”, has for many years been associated with the University of Limburg School of Medicine in Maastricht, Netherlands. At his department of cardiology, many future clinical cardiac electrophysiologists trained from 1976 until his retirement in 2002.

Career:

As a pupil and collaborator of the late Professor Dirk Durrer in Amsterdam, Dr. Wellens was involved in the early developments in programmed electrical stimulation of the heart in patients with the Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. In these patients, cardiac arrhythmias it was shown for the very first time that were first shown to be possibly initiated and terminated by critically timed premature beats. In 1971, he reported on the use of programmed electrical stimulation of the heart in patients with atrial flutter, AV nodal tachycardia, and accessory atrioventricular connections. In 1972, he showed that the arrhythmia of patients with ventricular tachycardia could also reproducibly be initiated and terminated by timed premature stimuli. These investigations were the basis for the new surgical and pacing approaches to the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias that became known as “cardiac electrophysiology”.[3] to be Wellens also demonstrated that the reproducible initiation and termination of arrhythmias by programmed electrical stimulation of the heart allowed the study of the effect of antiarrhythmic drugs on the mechanism of the arrhythmia. In 1977, he moved to the new University of Limburg in Maastricht, Netherlands, to develop academic cardiology there. Starting from scratch, he created an internationally known center for the study and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.[3]

Mark Dayton recovering after collapsing during his State of the State address

By David Montgomery and Rachel E. Stassen-Berger
PUBLISHED: January 23, 2017 at 7:51 pm | UPDATED: January 24, 2017 at 12:24 pm
at twincities.com

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton collapses while giving his annual State of the State Address in the House Chambers of the State Capitol in St. Paul, Monday, January 23, 2017. Dayton had tripped earlier in the evening before heading to the podium. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

UPDATE: Gov. Mark Dayton has prostate cancer, says he is able to do the job

Gov. Mark Dayton collapsed during his State of the State address Monday evening in front of an assembled audience of lawmakers, state officials and Minnesotans.

The 69-year-old Dayton fainted 45 minutes into the speech before a joint session of the Legislature at the state Capitol in St. Paul. After spending several minutes on the ground in the House chamber, he walked into a back room with assistance. His staff later said that he returned home, was evaluated by medics and is planning to deliver his biennial budget on Tuesday.

Lewis Griffith was only 13 years old when his dad Steve suffered a cardiac arrest in their Forestville [California] home. Luckily Lewis had learned CPR in his PE class at school and saved his father’s life in 2014 (John Burgess/ The Press Democrat)

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as stress cardiomyopathy, is a type of non-ischemic cardiomyopathy in which there is a sudden temporary weakening of the muscular portion of the heart. This weakening may be triggered by emotional stress, such as the death of a loved one, a break-up, or constant anxiety. This leads to one of the common names, Broken Heart Syndrome. Stress cardiomyopathy is now a well-recognized cause of acute heart failure, lethal ventricular arrhythmias, and ventricular rupture.

The name “Takotsubo syndrome” comes from the Japanese word for a kind of octopus trap (ja), because the left ventricle takes on a shape resembling a fishing pot.

Signs and symptoms

The typical presentation of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a sudden onset of chest pain associated with ECG changes mimicking a myocardial infarction of the anterior wall. During the course of evaluation of the patient, a bulging out of the left ventricular apex with a hypercontractile base of the left ventricle is often noted. It is the hallmark bulging out of the apex of the heart with preserved function of the base that earned the syndrome its name “tako tsubo”, or octopus pot in Japan, where it was first described.